{"id":23034,"date":"2026-05-20T16:17:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T16:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-demands-senate-republicans-fire-parliamentarian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T16:17:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T16:17:22","slug":"trump-demands-senate-republicans-fire-parliamentarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-demands-senate-republicans-fire-parliamentarian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump demands Senate Republicans fire parliamentarian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded Senate Republicans fire the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she ruled this weekend that Republicans could not include funding for the White House ballroom in an immigration enforcement bill.<\/p>\n

Trump accused MacDonough of thwarting his agenda and urged Republicans to \u201cget smart and tough,\u201d escalating his long-running attacks on procedural hurdles inside Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cShockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of \u2018Parliamentarian\u2019 in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed, long ago, by Barack Hussein Obama and a vicious Lunatic known as Senator Harry Reid, who ran the Senate for the Dumocrats with an \u2018iron fist,\u2019\u201d Trump posted on Truth Social.<\/u><\/a> \u201cOver the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats \u2014 So why has she not been replaced?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama did not have a say in MacDonough\u2019s appointment in 2012.<\/p>\n

The broadside came just days after MacDonough ruled that a provision allowing roughly $1 billion in White House and Secret Service security funding tied to Trump\u2019s ballroom project could not be included in Republicans\u2019 reconciliation package under Senate rules.<\/p>\n

The decision was a significant setback for Republicans, who had hoped to pass the funding with a simple majority vote as part of a broader immigration and border security package. MacDonough determined that the provision requires 60 votes in the Senate, all but dooming the idea.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Semafor reported<\/u><\/a> that Trump called Senate Majority Leader John Thune, urging him to fire MacDonough.<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies have argued the ballroom itself would be funded through private donations, while administration officials sought federal funding for related security upgrades, including hardened infrastructure, drone detection systems and Secret Service facilities.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Trump defended the project<\/u><\/a> amid mounting criticism from Democrats and skepticism from some Republicans over using taxpayer dollars for a project the president initially framed as privately financed.<\/p>\n

During a tour of the construction site, Trump insisted the effort was \u201ca gift to the United States of America\u201d and said donors \u2014 not taxpayers \u2014 were paying for the ballroom itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded Senate Republicans fire the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she ruled this weekend that Republicans could not include funding for the White House ballroom in an immigration enforcement bill. Trump accused MacDonough of thwarting his agenda and urged Republicans to \u201cget smart and tough,\u201d escalating his long-running attacks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}